20–20946
Thirteen short stories with the titles: “Momma”; The stick-in-the-muds; Read it again; The father of waters; Innocence; The college Lorelei; Yellow cords; The split; A story I can’t write; The butcher’s daughter; The quick-silver window; The dauntless bookkeeper; You hadn’t ought to. The stories have appeared in Collier’s and other magazines.
“If the people all belong to about the same class, the stories themselves are of very uneven merit, several of them being very good, while others are distinctly poor. The book gives, take it all in all, an accurate picture of certain phases of American life.”
+ − N Y Times p19 N 14 ’20 580w
HUGHES, RUPERT. What’s the world coming to? il *$1.90 (1c) Harper
20–8631
Bob Taxter, coming home from the war, learns that he has inherited ten thousand dollars. His first thought is that now he will be free to marry April, the girl he has loved and quarrelled with since childhood. But he finds that April too has inherited money, a much larger sum than his own. He straightway sets about making more and turns his attention to oil. And quite opportunely Joe Yarmy and his sister Kate appear on the scene. The old homestead in Texas is all ready to gush oil. They need only capital. Bob bites, but April is sceptical. They quarrel and she returns his ring. Bewildered, Bob finds himself engaged to marry Kate. But there has been another sceptic, old Uncle Zeb, family retainer of the Taxters, now a “professor of vacuum cleaning.” It is he who thwarts the wedding plans, redeems the ten thousand dollars and the Taxter diamonds. This is the story, but the book abounds in an astounding array of other matters, doggerel verses current at the time, statistics, price lists, quotations from the Brewers’ board of trade, and the author’s opinions on prohibition and social conditions generally.
“The plot is fairly complicated, and interspersed with a very great deal of comment and of moralizing, some of which is worth reading, though most of it is exceedingly trite. The novel is inordinately long, but no doubt it will please Mr Hughes’s admirers.”